My vCenter C: drive ran out of space

I came across something interesting today. The 160 GB C: drive on my vCenter Server ran out of space today…rather embarrassing. The first thing I checked is why in the heck my alerts didn’t go off…ok..problem fixed. After a couple of Google searches I came across and interesting VMware KB. Apparently there is a bug in the vCenter 5.5 upgrade that enables debug logging on the VMware Syslog Collector service and logs to C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Syslog Collector\logs\debug.log. In this case, my debug log was 62GB. The fix is rather simple. Stop the ‘VMware Syslog Collector’ service and edit the C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Syslog Collector\vmconfig-syslog.xml file (make a copy of it first) and change the following:

<debug> <level>1</level> </debug>

to

<debug> <level>0</level> </debug>

Remove the debug.log file and start the service again.

After upgrading to vCenter Server 5.5, the debug.log file of syslog collector is growing without limit (2094175)

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Symptoms

• After upgrading to vCenter Server 5.5, the debug.log file of syslog collector is growing without limit
• C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Syslog Collector\logs\debug.log continues to grow without being rotated

Resolution

This is a known issue affecting VMware Syslog Collector 5.5.

Currently, there is no resolution.

To work around this issue:

1. Stop the VMware Syslog Collector service. For more information, see Stopping, starting, or restarting VMware vCenter Server services (1003895).
2. On the server running the VMware Syslog Collector service, navigate to C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Syslog Collector and save a copy of vmconfig-syslog.xml.
3. In a text editor, open vmconfig-syslog.xml and modify  from:
   
   <debug> <level>1</level> </debug>

   to

   <debug> <level>0</level> </debug>

4. Start the VMware Syslog Collector service. For more information, see Stopping, starting, or restarting VMware vCenter Server services (1003895).

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-Aaron